spynotes ::
  March 08, 2007
Melting

AJ�s school field trip seems to have been a big success, although AJ himself seems to have mixed feelings about the whole venture. He says he had fun, but he also says it was �long� and �some parts were kind of scary.� But he liked it �when they threw the water on the witch because it was blue sparkly stuff,� and �the tornado was really cool because it was the pole with fabric on it and they made it into a cone.�

The Girl Next Door missed the field trip. She has been a little under the weather but mainly she is really missing her mom, who is on a five day vacation with friends. Her dad is working at home this week and TGND has been tearful. Her dad had to do a presentation this afternoon so TGND came over for a half an hour before I took the kids to school. They had fun until it was time to go into the school and then TGND, probably reminded that her mom wasn�t going to kiss her goodbye, started sobbing.

Instead of dropping the kids off at the door like I usually do � AJ has been dismissing me, �You don�t have to walk me there, Mommy� � I took them in and sat with TGND on my lap until she calmed down enough to get in line. Her classmates were worried about her. �What�s the matter?� they asked. �She misses her mom who�s out of town,� I�d say to each of them and they�d nod knowingly and pat her arm. �My mom went away one time and I was really sad too.� I waited until the teacher came to walk the line into school and asked her to keep an eye on TGND. She made a fuss over her, grabbed her hand and walked her in at the front of the line � a special treat. But it was her classmates that really touched me, the three little girls dressed in pink that sat with her in the back of the line, patting her arm as she tried to hold in her sobs and saying, �It�s going to be okay.� It was one more reminder to me not to underestimate young children, an impressive display of humanity.

The rest of my afternoon was much less inspirational. I bought cabbage and returned emails and did a little research. But mostly I was still doing conference follow-up, which is taking a lot of time, but is also productive in its own way. I find the follow-up agreeable in that I have a myriad of small assignments that can be completed relatively quickly, thus giving me the satisfaction of checking things off my list. My usual projects are bigger and are more often than not left hanging at the end of the day. But I am also irritated by them, feeling like they are infringing on my time, yes, but mostly because I feel like the chief advantage to coming home from a conference is the end of the schmoozing and I am finding that this time it may be just beginning.

Adding to my sense of a slow slippage into insanity is the incessant dripping of the melting snow from the roof to the back deck with metronomic regularity. It is the tempo of house music, but less loud than the car stereos that vibrate the windows at night. In a house that's been plagued by water in places where it is not supposed to be, dripping is not what you want to hear. But then again, dripping means it's getting warmer and getting warmer means that spring is coming. And as of Sunday's time change, it will still be light after dinner. I've never seen sun on snow after dinner, not in my entire life. I'm kind of looking forward to it.

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